Creating The I&M Canal: Worker's Woes and Wars

The I & M Canal has had much historical impact on LaSalle  County as well as early United States history.  The canal was first mentioned by the Marquette and    Jolliet expedition during their travels of the area in 1673.  They noted that a canal was needed to bypass the swampy lands where the Illinois River was low and needed to be portaged by canoe.  With the addition of a canal, a trade route would be established from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. 

  The I & M Canal was first surveyed to become a canal by Steven Harriman Long in 1816.  Long’s proposal was used by Nathaniel Pope and Ninian Edwards (first and only governor of the Illinois Territory from 1809-1818) to make the Illinois  Territory a State.

Because of the canal survey done the Illinois Territory petitioned for the northern border of the proposed State be moved to include the entire I & M Canal area. This gave the state of Illinois access to Lake Michigan. Illinois was granted Statehood in 1818, even though the territory itself did not meet the population criteria. This was in large part due to the recently proposed Canal and its purported economic and transportation growth.

A ceremonious ground breaking occurred near Chicago on July 4, 1836. The first year of construction was plagued by bad weather and limited man power. Much of the work completed in the first year was acquiring man power, building access roads and other preliminary work. At its peak, the I & M Canal employed 1,700 workers that hand dug the Canal. A mule drawn scoop was used to dig the Canal, and a broad Ax was used by the workers to clear the trees and vegetation along the banks of the I & M Canal.     Workers were paid $1 per day and were made to work 16 hour days. They were provided rustic homes for their families. Many workers contracted illness and disease, often perishing, during the construction of the canal. In 1847 the workers tried to mobilize and demand $1.25 a day and a work day that    consisted of labor hours from 6am to 7pm with two hours off for lunch and dinner. This measure failed and the workers were forced to complete the project with their standing wages and work hours.   

Work along the I & M Canal was very strenuous and was often done by immigrant workers. Workers included Native Americans, freed slaves, and immigrants of German and Irish decent. The Irish made up a large portion of the labor force. The Irish immigrants were often thought of as second class citizens.

In 1840 a Scotch traveler wrote the following about some Irish canal workers near Utica:

"We had scarcely got beyond the edge of town before we came to a  colony of Irish laborers employed on the Illinois Canal, and a more repulsive scene we had not for a long time beheld. The number congregated here were about 200, including men, women and children, and these were crowded together in 14 or 15 log huts, temporarily erected for their shelter. I had never been in the south of Ireland and cannot say how far the appearance of this colony differed from that of villages there, but certainly in the north of  Ireland, over which I have traveled from Dublin to Londonderry, I never saw anything approaching the scene before us in dirtiness and disorder."

 The War of Kerry Patch

The I&M Canal was the epicenter of feuds between clans.  Economic and religious differences between the Irish Catholics, or the “Corkonians”, and the Irish Protestants, often referred to as the “Far-Downers”, kick-started the War of Kerry Patch.

In May 1838, the Corkonians flexed their power in numbers to drive the Far-Downers away from working on the canal. After a bloody confrontation, the Corkonians celebrated their victory by traveling to Ottawa and LaSalle-Peru, where they continued their assault on the Far-Downers. Led by labor boss Edward Sweeney, the Corkonians numbered 500.

In Ottawa, Sheriff Alson Woodruff formed a posse, with Gen. D. F. Hitt and M. E. Hollister as commanders. A group of Far-Downers joined them. With a failed first confrontation at Buffalo Rock, the posse would secure the upper hand at Kerry Patch, next to Split Rock and Pecumsaugum Creek. The posse opened fire, which dispersed the Corkonians. With 60 arrested and 7 dead, the war of Kerry Patch ended.

After this incident it was decided that churches needed to be established to quell the violence and interject "morals" into the newly established canal towns. The first Catholic Church in LaSalle County was located in LaSalle. As described by Bill Johnson in the LCHS Winter 2019 Newsletter, "The priests began ministering to LaSalle’s Catholic residents immediately after their arrival. Mass was celebrated at the Byrne residence, at a downtown boarding house, and outside beneath an elm tree when weather permitted. Construction of a log cabin church, located on land loaned by the Canal Commissioners, was completed by early August of 1838. The church, Holy Cross, was blessed August 5, 1838. The log cabin church served the needs of LaSalle’s Catholics until the completion of the permanent stone church, St. Patrick’s, in 1851."

*This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2023 edition of the LCHS Newsletter, a quarterly publication from the LaSalle County Historical Society.